'Surely there's room in the Christian faith to make your own decisions
about things?' This was one of the many questions contained in the letter
I quoted more fully in chapter five. The answer to that question is both
'Yes' and 'No'. Within the framework God has built for our protection there
is a great deal of scope for personal decision-making. But where my wants
conflict with God's clear commands, like 'You shall not commit adultery',
'Flee sexual immorality', 'Avoid lust', we have no bargaining power. As citizens
of God's kingdom, expecting to enjoy all the privileges such citizenship
affords, our duty is to obey. And I sometimes wonder what earthly king would
accommodate the same degree of rebellion we mete out to God. In
Alice-in-Wonderland terms, 'Off with his head' would have been the order
of the day!

We saw in the last chapter that God's framework, sexually
speaking, rules out pre-marital intercourse for the Christian. This still
leaves some pressing problems for the couple in love: Then where do we draw
the petting line? How do we control the sex urge? Why do we fail so frequently?
What do we do about such frequent failures?

The petting line

A girl once asked me this question: 'If we can't go all the way,
how far can we go? What is an appropriate expression of affection in these
one-to-one relationships?'

Here is a very important question. You may be reading
this chapter because you are searching for an answer to it for

Page 91

yourself or for your friends. It is a question most Christian teachers
shelve. I want to tackle it realistically, biblically and frankly. My frankness
arises, not from a desire to titillate but to educate. It concerns me that,
in the sex-saturated society in which we live, too many Christians are uninformed
and compromise their behaviour standards through naivete.

What I plan to do is to draw a scale and place petting
practices in some sort of order on it. We shall then examine some of these
activities in detail and I shall try to help you to decide whether these
should or should not find a place in your relationships. I am placing the
responsibility on you (your choice, your decision) quite
deliberately because, although I have said we need to tackle the question
biblically, we need to be aware that the petting problem is a twentieth-century
problem. The Bible does not address itself to it. One reason for this, as
we observed in the preface, is that in the Holy Land, in the days when the
Bible was written, marriages were arranged by the parents. A child of three
years old might therefore be betrothed to a seemingly suitable partner whom
she might not meet until her wedding night. The wedding would probably be
solemnized when she was about twelve years old: before the age of puberty.
And who wants to start petting before puberty? The Bible writers had no need,
then, to address themselves to our sex problems.

In the absence of the specific teaching many of us
long for, we must hang as the back-cloth to human reasoning the working
definition of love we observed at the end of chapter five: Jesus' command
to love your neighbour as yourself. We must also ask ourselves a pertinent
question:

'Is my chief concern to live biblically or
am I wanting to squeeze as much sexual licence as I possibly can out of a
holy God?' Pause to put that question to yourself before you read
on.

The sliding scale

I realize you cannot really draw an accurate slide-rule or ladder
physical contact; that a warm hug on one occasion may be less erotic than
the touch of a hand on another. But I

Page 92

believe a visual aid might help our discussion even though it is
an inadequate or, in some senses, an inaccurate one.

It might look something like:

Genital intercourse

Oral sex

Mutual masturbation

Heavy petting

Petting

Prolonged kissing

Kissing

Cuddling

Embracing

Holding hands

Scale of touch 1

We have already observed that the Bible's teaching on the context
of sexual intercourse implies that Bible-observing Christians will draw the
line below genital intercourse. That is, they will exclude it from
their pre-marital experience. The scale will therefore look like
this:

Genital intercourse

Oral sex

Mutual masturbation

Heavy petting

Petting

Prolonged kissing

Kissing

Cuddling

Embracing

Holding hands

Scale of touch 2

Thus far the position is clear, though perhaps not welcome to those
who wish the Bible was not so definite. But what about the rest of the
scale?

Page 93

Oral sex

Most Bible-believing Christians accept that intercourse is God's
wedding present for married couples, to be unpacked on the wedding
night and enjoyed within the commitment of marriage. But what of oral
sex?

Oral sex, as we have seen, takes place when a girl
receives her boyfriend's penis into her mouth or when a man caresses his
girlfriend's clitoris with his mouth and tongue. Prolonged oral stimulation
of this nature can bring both partners to a climax. Technically, this is
not full intercourse. Virginity is not lost. Is it then permissible or
not?

When you are making up your mind on any course of
action in the area of sexual relationships it is important to ask four pressing
questions and to place them alongside the biblical principle I have already
emphasized: love your neighbour as yourself. The first question to ask is,
'Is this practice dangerous in any way?' The second, 'Does it reflect the
nature of Christian love?' Third, 'How does this behaviour, if I indulge
in it, affect my spiritual life?' Fourth, 'Is this practice natural, that
is, did God design us to make love in this way?' We must address ourselves
to each of these questions in turn.

One of the dangers of oral sex is that VD of the throat
may be contracted through this activity. Gonorrhea of the throat is a serious
and horrid disease and it is on the increase in our society today. If there
is even a vague possibility that this sexual activity will result in disease,
is it truly loving to subject your partner to this kind of
activity?

And what about the nature of Christian love? When
Jesus told us to love one another in the same way he loves us, he expected
us to take responsibility for those we say we love. We will therefore avoid
inflicting hurt on them, refuse to put them at risk and avoid exposing them
to danger. But when it comes to oral sex, I believe many men in particular,
do behave selfishly. They demand a series of sex thrills from their partner
which leaves the girl feeling frustrated, bewildered and even nauseated.
This, surely, is not love but the antithesis of the kind of love Jesus
is describing.

Page 94

And the effect on your spiritual life must not be
ignored. Several couples known to me believed this practice was harmless
until they tried it. It quickly drove a wedge between themselves and God.
To quote just one couple: 'We believe that oral sex was perfectly all right
until we tried it. Then we were plagued with so much guilt that it fouled
our relationship with God.'

Any practice which imperils your peace with God should
be terminated. It will never be easy to backtrack if you have aroused one
another in this way. It will therefore be necessary to talk frankly to your
partner and to help one another to re-draw the boundaries of
touch.

Christian opinion is divided when it comes to our
fourth question, 'Is oral sex natural?' Not everyone will agree with John
White's conclusion: 'Orogenital "climaxes" and penile-rectile "climaxes"
are sub-normal sexual practices. Like masturbation they thwart the
erotic culmination for which our bodies were designed, and therefore downgrade
sexuality.'1 In fact, another Christian doctor gives contradicting
advice to married couples: 'If both of you enjoy it (oral sex) and
find it pleasant, then it may properly fit into your lovemaking
practices.'2

When married couples ask my advice about oral
sex I echo this second opinion. But I would not give this advice to couples
in casual relationships. Surely such intimacies should be reserved for a
deeply committed relationship. Surely, if there is even the slightest possibility
of VD spreading to your partner through this practice, it should be avoided
at all costs.

Mutual masturbation to orgasm

It often happens that two people who love each other agree to abstain
from full genital intercourse but, while withholding the final act, the
penetration of the vagina by the penis, they stimulate one another's sex
organs with the hands until each partner is brought to a full orgasmic
experience. Again, technically, intercourse has not taken place and the question
is often asked: 'Is this practice permissible or deceitful?'

Again we must consider the dangers of this practice
and

Page 95

measure them against the 'Love your neighbour as yourself' principle.
As I explained in my book Growing into Love,3 one danger
is that a child can be conceived in this way even though the penis never
fully penetrates the vagina. Two people indulging in this kind of love-play
obviously lie very close and as they arouse one another they move even closer
together, so close that sperm may be split into the entrance of the vagina.
This sperm, though split accidentally, is sufficient to fertilize the female
egg and thus to conceive a child.

The second danger attached to this practice proves
the truth of the saying that sexual kicks have sexual kick-backs. Many couples
suffer the deprivation of sexual frigidity after they marry because of this
kind of activity in earlier years. The female grows accustomed to manual
manipulation and dislikes the change to penile stimulation, and her reluctance
to change annoys her husband; the male may be troubled by what is known as
premature ejaculation because he has not learned the art of true lovemaking:
making his partner happy sexually by waiting before releasing sperm and enjoying
a climax for himself. Where this problem persists, the wife feels frustrated,
even cheated.

Of course, I am not saying that all couples who practise
mutual masturbation to orgasm will bring a child into the world, nor that
all such couples will meet sexual adjustment problems after they are married.
What I am saying is that very many people do suffer in this way and the question
therefore needs to be posed: Is this responsible loving? Is it loving at
all? Is it responsible? Isn't it a pharisaical keeping of the letter of the
law while denying the spirit of it? I have discussed this further in Growing
into Love, p. 87.

As Christians we owe it to one another not to scar
others emotionally. This practice frequently does. As Christians we are exhorted
to honour our parents. The degree of pain inflicted on parents by pregnancies
of this nature is heartbreaking. As Christians we owe it to society not to
bring children into the world if we are not ready to care for them and love
them. Can this behaviour, therefore, be indulged in by Christians and leave
them guilt-free? And, again, we must enquire what effect this genital excitation
has on each individual's walk with God.

Page 96

Each individual must decide for himself. But in my
opinion, one-to-one relationships of the kind we are studying, which are
formed without any probability of marriage, years away from the possibility
of marriage, should push the boundary even further back so that the sliding
scale begins to look like this:

Genital intercourse

Oral sex

Mutual masturbation

?______________?

Heavy petting

Petting

Prolonged kissing

Kissing

Cuddling

Embracing

Holding hands

Scale of touch 3

Heavy Petting

By heavy petting I mean the practice of slipping your hands inside
a girl's dress to fondle her breasts; or undoing the zip of your boyfriend's
trousers to fond his genitals; or stroking your girlfriend's things or genitalia.
Heavy petting includes lying together in a state of undress from the waist
upwards, or fully naked; lying side by side or on top of one
another.

There is nothing wrong with these activities of
themselves. They are delights designed by God for marriage where they
are intended to result in intercourse, created to awaken the degree of sexual
excitation which will eventually bring each partner to orgasm.

As Christian people we must be responsible people.
As Christian people we must learn to make wise choices. As Christian people
we must look ahead, not just at passing pleasures, but at their consequences.
Anyone who has crosses the boundary between petting, by which I
mean

Page 97

fondling one another outside the clothes, and the heavy petting
I have just described, will tell you, if they are honest, that the difference
is phenomenal: it is not unlike the difference between grinding along in
second gear and slipping into overdrive.

We need to acknowledge the cold, clinical fact of
the matter that there is something about the naked flesh which brings to
the surface the full force of sexual desire, the glandular urge we talked
about in chapter two. As one girl described it to her boyfriend when his
hands started wandering down her body: 'There's a tigress living inside me,
and if you touch me there it will leap out at us.' She was right.

That tiger has to be tamed; not chained, nor mounted
and ridden, but trained. Tiger-training becomes much more difficult with
every new and exciting form of touch. That is why you may have to bring the
boundaries back another notch:

Genital intercourse

Oral sex

Mutual masturbation

Heavy petting

?______________?

Petting

Prolonged kissing

Kissing

Cuddling

Embracing

Holding hands

Scale of touch 4

Genital intercourse is for marriage only.

Consider carefully the consequences of breaking into the question
mark areas.

Think carefully about the effect of every expression of affection.
Don't assume that any form of touch is necessary innocent for
you.

Page 98

Petting

By petting I mean fondling one another's breasts and genitals outside
the clothes. I also mean any form of lying together. Included in petting
comes prolonged kissing: any kiss which is more than a leisurely peck and
particularly any kiss which involves that highly sensitive organ, the
tongue.

What we have to recognize is that any form of petting
is dynamite. As one young friend of mine admitted after kissing his girlfriend
for the first time: 'It was fantastic. But it was frightening too. It brought
to the surface such powerful feelings in me that I didn't even know were
there. I know I'm going to have to cool it or I will lose
control.'

I admire a young person who admits to that degree
of pressure and adjusts the sexual sliding scale accordingly. As I said at
the beginning of this chapter, the Bible does not set out a neat set of rules.
'Do not indulge in petting.' 'Do not kiss for more than thirty seconds.'
'Abstain from cuddling, caressing and holding hands.' The Bible does not
even mention these fascinating phenomena for reasons I explained
earlier.

In the absence of absolute guidelines, every Christian
young person must take stock of the bare, biological facts: Holding hands
quickly leads to embracing. Embracing leads to cuddling, caressing and kissing
almost as quickly. This first, fairly innocent, phase passes automatically,
yet imperceptibly, into the next: petting. Once the body is thus revved up,
it wants to dictate the pace, to press on to pursue the delights of heavy
petting. But by the time a couple indulges in heavy petting, chemical changes
have taken place which make it exceedingly difficult for most people to stop
short of intercourse.

For example, when a man fondles his girlfriend's breasts,
her nipples swell and become highly sensitive to touch. At the same time
a secretion of fluid lubricates her vagina so that her body is prepared for
the act of intercourse. God did not create the female body with a convenient
off-switch which could be applied at the height of sexual
excitation.

Similarly, when a girl fondles her boyfriend's genitals,
the penis become stiff and highly sensitive to touch. When

Page 99

aroused by such erection, the male, no matter how sincerely he
desires to go God's way, finds it extremely hard to say no to the
full act of intercourse. Again, God seems not to have supplied the male body
with a switch which can be flicked to 'off' when the pressure is
on.

I have spelled out these cold, clinical facts, not
to shock, but to educate. If we are to be adult and to make wise and loving
choices we must know the facts, be aware of the dangers, heed the warnings
and act accordingly.

Young people sometimes press me for an answer to the
question, 'How far can we go?' I realize that if you are one of those
people, if you are reading this chapter because you want me to decide for
you where you should draw the petting line, you may well be feeling disappointed
and frustrated by now. I hope, though, that you will accept that I cannot
be your conscience.

On biblical authority I have the right to say to you
that genital intercourse outside of the marriage is wrong. I have no
biblical authority for dictating to you where you draw the petting
line. What I do have is the responsibility, as an older Christian, not to
leave you to muddle your way through your relationships with the opposite
sex; the compassion to encourage you to think carefully about your use of
touch.

While I was planning this chapter I was invited to
speak to a certain Christian Union group. On my way to the meeting, I drove
along a stretch of road which had been newly surfaced. Road signs warned
drivers to restrict their speed to 20 mph. But several drivers speeded past
me at 60 mph. I was not surprised, therefore, to find the roadside littered
with fragments of shattered windscreens. In this chapter I have tried to
point out the dangers. Whether or not you slow down is entirely up to you;
but if you decide to accelerate, be aware of the possible consequences for
you and your partner and your relationship with God.

Cooling the sex urge

But how do you slow down? How do you cool it? When
the flame of passion begins to burn, how do you quench it? Where is the fire
extinguisher? Or as one girl put it, 'What I'd like to know is how
 how do you channel your sexuality

Page 100

into forging warm friendships? If you don't repress or suppress
your genital desires, then surely they'll take over  especially at
certain stages of the menstrual cycle when you only have to touch your skin
and your body tingles all over.'

In responding to this question I want us to look at
certain provocative situations to avoid, certain substitutes which might
replace excessive cuddling and certain disciplines which must be introduced
if we are to master our sexual desires instead of being consumed by
them.

As we observed in chapter two, any appetite grows
when it is fed. The more you eat, the more you want to eat until you overeat
unless you control your appetite. The same is true of the sex appetite. Yet
Christians may develop, as others do, an inflated interest in sex. They may
feast on plays, novels, girlie magazines, blue movies, pictures of pin-ups,
and personal erotic fantasies. We are surrounded by people who are prepared
to go on feeding our insatiable sex hunger. There is money in it. Paul's
advice is this, 'Don't be beguiled'. Rather, feast on heavenly things while
you deliberately deal the death-blow to the lust, the evil, the greed and
the idolatry which incurs the wrath of God (see Colossians 3:2 and
5).

Of course, this reorientation will not come naturally
nor without a struggle. But just as a diabetic knows that unless he changes
his diet he will die, we, too, have to take the sex situation seriously.
Unless we act ruthlessly and take ourselves in hand, placating the sex tiger
will result in spiritual death for some of us. It is as serious as
that.

Situations to avoid

But this reorientation is not simply a reorientation of the mind.
It has to be accompanied by a radical change in behaviour. We know, for example,
that provocative dress eggs people on, yet Christians (both male and female)
sometimes wear jeans specially designed 'to make you sexy'; women wear perfume
guaranteed to inflame the passion, see-through blouses which leave little
to the imagination, skin-tight T-shirts and no bra, all of which attract
attention to the curves so fascinating to the opposite sex. Such
provocative

Page 101

dress is not only unwise but unloving. It makes self-control difficult
for one's partner and Christians in general.

Similarly, certain behaviour which pretends to be
love-in-action is the antithesis of love. As we have seen, petting, and
particularly heaving petting, produces the kind of sexual excitation where
it is almost impossible to say 'No' to the full act of genital intercourse.
Many, many Christian couples have compromised their own sex standards not
because they set out to rebel against God, but because in their love-play
they reached the point of no return and fell captive to erotic desire and
passion. Many have done so in complete ignorance. I feel a deep burden for
such couples. That is why I have tried to spell out the facts explicitly,
calling a spade a spade in this way. Keep these facts before you. Know which
are the highly sensitive, erogenous zones on your body: the breasts, the
nipples, the thighs, the genitals, even the ear lobes! If your partner's
hands stray on to these areas, push them away, tenderly but firmly. As Walter
Trobisch so sensibly said, 'A slap on the fingers can be a greater proof
of love than a French kiss.'4 And if your partner pushes that
hand away, show them that you respect them by keeping the hand away. To inflict
unwanted genital intimacy on anyone, or to charm another person to
go further than they want to go, is not love, it is selfishness. It means
you care more about yourself than your partner. Love never trespasses, never
tries to take advantage of another, never tries to overpower another, or
to borrow Len Barnett's phrase, never tries to 'storm the gate'. No. Real
love is patient, kind, protective of the loved one's safety and
well-being.

And real love recognizes the fact of the situation,
that nakedness, near-nakedness and any form of undressing is in itself a
powerful stimulus. It quickly brings couples to that point of no return I
referred to earlier.

I am not saying be scared silly by these facts. Nor
am I saying sweep them under the carpet as though they do not exist. I am
not even saying sit on them. What I am saying is, recognize their powerful
presence. Recognize that they are a God-given part of you. Resolve, not to
be mastered by them, but to be good stewards of them.

Page 102

Stewarding your sexuality

You can do this in three ways: by controlling your desires,
disciplining them and replacing a glut of genital play with other activities.
Let me explain what I mean.

The most successful disciplinarian among the
schoolteachers who taught me at school was the smallest, quietest, most mouselike
teacher in the school. She would often arrive to find our room in an uproar.
Faced with the riot, she never seemed to panic. She certainly never shouted.
She did use a foolproof method of class discipline. She would stand at her
desk, peer at the rebellious class, sum up the situation and then whisper
in her soft, prim voice, 'I want you all to stand by your desks and be quite
silent.' We always fell for it. Because she spoke in a whisper, an insistent
'Shh! Shh!' would go round the classroom. To hear her was to obey her. And
so we would stand, sheepish and still, beside our desks. Meanwhile she, like
Little-Bo-Peep, would gaze at us with a hurt expression which seemed to say,
'How could you do this to me?' We would feel guilty. The hubbub would subside.
Then she would smile her beautiful smile and say, 'Now sit down and take
out your books.' As I say, we fell for it every time.

Our glandular urges, the biological tension which
pulsates through our body, the sexual desire which surges through our minds
and emotions threatening to devour our entire person, like a class of rowdy,
rebellious teenagers, can be controlled and disciplined. We must not suppress
them. We must not repress them, as I said earlier. We must acknowledge their
presence and determine that, like my timid teacher, we will gain the
upper hand.

We must do this because Jesus requires it of us and
to love him is to obey him (John 14:15). We must do this because love can
be hurt, even killed, by mis-directed sex. We must do this for our own
well-being. The million dollar question is, 'How?'

One way is to follow Paul's advice to the Philippians.
'Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure,
whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable  if anything is excellent
or praiseworthy  think about such

Page 103

things' (Philippians 4:8). In other words, retune your minds. Tune
out the distorted. Tune into the truth.

Genital love-play, as we have seen, is true
and noble and pure and lovely and admirable and excellent and praiseworthy
and right in its God-given context, marriage. Because it is tarnished and
trivialized and cheapened when snatched out of this context, we have to learn
in our one-to-one pre-marital relationships, the art of focusing, not primarily
on the physical expression of affection, but on the many other ingredients
of the friendship which, it is to be hoped, exist alongside erotic desire.
The clamour for genital intercourse is reduced as you determine to explore
all the other avenues of your relationship: sport, music, Christian activities,
poetry, reading, walking and so on. Concentrate on these and you find that
a thousand strands of sharing bind you to one another in a rich relationship.
Isolate the physical and over-indulge in it and, like eating too much Devonshire
cream on a holiday, you will be sick: sick from it and sick of
it.

As you refocus, as you determine to gain the mastery,
a new sense of excitement creeps into the relationship. You even begin to
enjoy that much-neglected art 'discipline'. After all, the discipline of
waiting until marriage for the full, physical expression of love is not unlike
the discipline of keeping your Christmas presents unopened until Christmas
Day. You know your presents sit there, wrapped, on top of the wardrobe or
under the Christmas tree. You long for a feel or a peep or shake. But you
know that to let those parcels divulge their secret prematurely will spoil
the unique magic of Christmas Day. Similarly, as Walter Trobisch so rightly
says, those who unwrap God's wedding present of genital intercourse miss
the 'beauty of the in-between, the pain of waiting and the joy of suspense,
the suffering which made them so happy.'5 And as Richard Foster
reminds us, 'Discipline brings freedom.'6

The role of the will

The key to victory is the will. When I pointed this out to the
girl who asked the question I quoted at the beginning of this section, 'How
do you channel your sexuality into forging warm friendships?', her face
brightened, her eyes sparkled

Page 104

and she replied, 'Yes. It is possible, isn't it? I mean,
you can discipline yourself. It all depends on the will. Perhaps that's
where the elusive off-switch hides  in the will.'

Metropolitan Anthony Bloom underlines the vital role
played by the will:

We must be prepared to do God's will and pay the cost .... We see
that we cannot partake deeply of the life of God unless we change profoundly.
It is therefore essential that we should go to God in order that he should
transform and change us... But it is not a change of mind alone that we call
conversion. We can change our minds and go no farther; what must follow is
an act of the will and unless our will comes into motion and is redirected
Godwards, there is no conversion; at most there is only an incipient, still
dormant and inactive change in us....

Nor does conversion end there: it must lead us farther
in the process of making us different. Conversion begins but it never ends.
It is an increasing process in which we gradually become more and more what
we should be.7

With an act of the will, then, we must place the hard clay of our
rebellious will into the hands of the Creator and beg him to remould us.
To change the metaphor, we must constantly bring our lives into alignment
with the will of the Father, or more accurately, ask God to bring our wills
into alignment with his. Prayer must become the Alignment Centre. Prayer
must be the place where we sweat out the fearsome battle Jesus fought in
his temptation in the wilderness. Prayer must become the place where, like
Jesus, we make our choice: to live a life centered around number one, gratifying
self no matter who gets hurt or deprived, or to deny ourselves the delights
of self-gratification so that we fulfil the law of the King.

To align ourselves to the King cannot happen without
a struggle. It can be done by struggling, by co-operating with the Holy Spirit,
and by the grace of God.

What we must do with these sexual appetites is similar
to what we do when we fast from food. You plan a thirty-six-hour fast.
At

Page 105

eight o'clock the first morning, your appetite tells you it is
time for breakfast. You do not repress the desire by pretending you are not
hungry. You look at the clock, admit to your stomach that normally you do
eat at this time, but you tell your stomach that today will be different.
You are not eating toast for breakfast: simply drinking water. At one o'clock
the situation repeats itself. That insistent little voice called appetite
knocks on the door of your awareness to remind you it is dinner time. 'So
it is,' you reply, gently, with appreciation. 'But today, we're not having
the normal fare: just a glass of water.' At six o'clock, appetite, the faithful
clockwatcher, visits your awareness again. 'Remember what I said?' you reply.
'We're not eating for another twelve hours. Let's have a glass of
water.'

The first time you fast, you wonder whether you and
appetite can keep up the contest. The second time you fast, it becomes easier.
After that, the routine becomes an adventure. You know you can do it. You
know that you are not in bondage to food or appetite. You know that by the
grace of God, you are in control.

The way to treat the appetite of sex is not dissimilar.
Listen to its clamour. Recognize your need. Admit that these urges are not
someone else's problems but yours. Then take the emotions in hand. Treat
them like rowdy children. Discover the inner freedom which really does come
from discipline.

You will not discover it until you try it.

Why do we fail?

'Then why do I fail so consistently?' I can almost hear my readers
ask that question. I have a letter on the desk beside me asking just that
question. I have a young couple coming to see me this week puzzled by that
same question, crushed by persistent failure.

There are so many reasons. There's space here to mention
only three: bondage to the world's view, bondage to self, bondage to the
robot mentality.

Page 106

Bondage to the world's view

Many of us despite what I have written, despite what we believe
in our heads, are gripped at gut level by the world's view of sex: love each
other and do what you like. In his excellent little booklet, Love is a
Feeling to be Learned, Walter Trobisch shows how subtly this belief worms
its way into our lives:

During the time of Hitler, a film was shown in Germany which told
the story of a doctor whose wife had an incurable disease. In detail the
film showed how she was tormented by her sickness until her husband killed
her with an overdose of sedatives. When he was put on trial for murder, he
defended himself by saying: 'I loved my wife.'

Here, God's commandment: 'Thou shalt not kill' was
questioned in the name of love.

The film was shown in 1940 and was used by Hitler
as a psychological preparation for the killing of the incurable and insane,
for exterminating life which he judged unworthy of living. The end was the
assassination of six million Jews in the gas chambers of the concentration
camps.

Walter Trobisch concludes, and I agree with him,

If we seek to set up the standard of love ourselves, we fall into
the hands of the devil. When Germany questioned the commandment 'Thou shalt
not kill' in the name of love, she fell into the hands of the devil. When
we question today the commandment 'Thou shalt not commit adultery' in the
name of love we fall equally into the hands of the devil.'

Since we do not know what love is, love has to be
protected by the One who is love himself. There is never a contradiction
between love and divine will. There is no action of love which goes against
a commandment of God.8

When we disobey the King, as Adam found centuries ago, we give
Satan a foothold in our lives. He wreaks havoc now as he did then. What we
must do, therefore, is to renounce the

Page 107

devil with all his lies and his ways, seek to be cut free from
this bondage and determine to live differently.

Bondage to self

The second reason why we may fail is that each of us was born with
a bias to pleasing self and with an equally powerful bias against pleasing
God. Dietrich Bonhoeffer reminds us that, 'When Christ calls a man, he bids
him come and die.' Yes. The self has to die but the self is slow to die.
Like the proverbial cat, it seems to have nine lives. We think we have put
lust to death one day and the next it proves to us that it is alive and well,
as troublesome as ever.

Where the determination to live for self is born of
rebellion against God, 'I am going to make my own decisions no matter
what God says', we need to confess and be cut free from this self-seeking
attitude. But it sometimes happens that this search for genital love is born,
not so much from rebellion as from deprivation of love in the past or the
present. Where sexual immorality springs from deep-seated need, it is healing
which is required as well as confession. We shall examine this deprivation
of love in more detail in the chapters on homosexuality and on
loneliness.

Bondage of the robot mentality

A third reason why Christian couples sometimes push over the boundaries
they themselves have built round their genital expression of affection is
that they expect God to do what they themselves must learn to do: discipline
their thoughts, discipline the wandering fingers, discipline the runaway
emotions. One young man I know complains regularly about God in the context
of sex: 'I've trusted him with my life. Then why does he allow me to be so
wayward?' But this young man puts himself in situations where he knows full
well temptation will gain the mastery over his wobbly will. This young man
feasts on pictures and thoughts he knows full well will feed his moral weakness.
Why, then, blame God? God is not going to padlock our feet, handcuff our
hands or clap our wild imagination into prison. No. We are not God's robots,
nor

Page 108

are we puppets on God's string. We are adults. Free. Free to make
good choices. Free to disobey.

When we fail

And if we disobey, if we fail, what then? Recollections of praying
with young people tormented by sexual misdemeanors of the past and present
are among my most treasured memories as I reflect on my counselling ministry.
The good news which I want to shout from the roof tops, which I have already
emphasized in my book Growing into Love, is that sexual sin is not
the unforgivable sin.

Nevertheless, sexual sin is a grievous sin. As Paul
puts it in his pastoral letter to the Corinthians: 'All other sins a man
commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his body'
(1 Corinthians 6:18). But it is deeper even than that. As we noted earlier,
sexual sin sinks in deeply. As one girl put it to me once: 'It's the memories
that keep cropping up, the dreams, the guilt. I just can't forgive
myself even though it all happened years ago.' There are ways out of this
predicament. Because they have relevance to later chapters also, I have placed
them in a chapter of their own at the end of this book. Turn to it when you
need to. Use it. Let it be one of the ways God transforms you into the likeness
of his amazing Son.